Crat'ax pulls me behind him and shifts the grip on his spear, peering in between the trees at the edge of the mangrove. Then he laughs. “It’s my guide!”
“Guide?” I look out from behind my fiance’s back.
A small creature is slowly crawling its way towards us, clearly out of its element. “Plik!”
We walk quickly towards the little beaver-like animal.
“He swam alongside as I paddled,” Crat'ax says. “When my boat was crushed and I swam ashore, he showed me where you were.”
I kneel by the skirr. “Thank you, Plik. I wish I had a splix to feed you!” I run my hands along his wet fur.
Plik bumps my hand with his snout, then waddles away and dives into the ocean with barely a splash.
“He’s much smarter than we know,” I muse. “I hope he will stay with us. But we have to stay somewhere tonight.”
Crat'ax looks up. “I don’t think it will rain much more, but the trees will drip all night long. Sit here, and I will build a hut.”
He does, quickly setting up a simple lean-to with a floor of huge, thick leaves that we turn around to get the dry side up. Wemunch on fruits that I find in the dark jungle, and then we curl up in the hut. Crat'ax embraces me firmly and keeps me warm while his hardness pokes me in the back. That turns me on, and I want to do more than just sleep. But then I accidentally close my eyes, and when I open them again it’s morning.
There’s nothing to pack, so we just start walking along the mangrove. It turns to a rocky shore and then a short beach, then mangrove again and so on. We don’t speak, just stay silent. None of us want to risk attracting a dinosaur now, when things have fallen into place.
We keep walking all day, just stopping to harvest fruits and eat them standing up. I lean back into Crat'ax’s massive bulk while we eat, and he rests one arm on my shoulder.
“I like it when we are alone,” he rumbles so I shake with the bass. “Nobody to spy on us. Nobody to hear our words. The tribe is important. But you are the center of my life.”
I turn my head to kiss his chest. “And you are the center of mine. It’s the way it should be.”
We walk on.
Night falls, and Crat'ax says that he recognizes the terrain and we won’t have to stop for the night. Soon after, we’re standing by the bay. The village is a cluster of flickering lights and fires in the dark. There are soft voices and the occasional bout of laughter. The smell of grilled splix makes my mouth water.
Crat'ax bellows for someone to come and get us, and soon after, two canoes manned by boys take us aboard and paddle us out to the village.
The evening meal is almost over, but men stoke the fire again and grill more splix while Crat'ax tells them what happened, and I drink fruit juice with a shot of frit in it.
They’re all astounded by the story, so much that a silence falls.
“I would have thought the dragon would kill all of you,” Chief Brun'ax marvels. “But he only killed the outcast and then went on his way. Was he not furious?”
“Who knows what a dragon thinks,” Crat'ax says. “But it is clear from their talk that he and Spru- that he and the outcast were conspiring.”
“Perhaps he freed the dragon!” a boy eagerly suggests. “Because he wanted to hurt us after we cast him out!”
There is a murmur of agreement.
My fiance and I exchange a quick glance. We have decided that the tribe doesn’t need to know who let Vyrathion out. If they know the truth, they might never trust me. I’m not happy about having that secret between me and the tribe, but Crat'ax says that he takes the responsibility for that. After all, I had this whole dragon situation forced on me.
“Then you were right all along, Crat'ax.” the chief states. “We should not have captured the dragon.”
“Perhaps not,” Crat'ax says calmly. “But that is in the past.”
“In every sense,” the chief says. “Because we are not hunting him anymore. We find that we gained nothing by keeping him in the cage, and that he was in fact a great calamity for us.”
There’s general agreement.
“And now,” Crat'ax says when the main news has been told, “I will ask Chief Brun'ax to prepare a ceremony for Callie and me. We intend to get married. Here, in this village. As soon as possible.”
The tribe is shocked to silence again. Some tribesmen who know what ‘marriage’ is whisper it to their friends.
